The Rap Sheet of Malcom Reynolds
by DeamonsRunWhenAGoodManGosToWar
Summary: The rap sheet of one Malcom Reynolds finds its way into the hands of three detectives in the 12th precinct. And Castle scares Ryan both as himself and as Mal. Hilarity ensues. oneshot.


It was the late afternoon summer sun filtering through the windows of NYPD's 12th Precinct that was to blame, he decided irritably. This whole mess had started when the body of an Alliance Agent was found hanging from a tree in Central Park. He had just gotten back from a weekend in the Hamptons with Mother and Alexis when his cell rang. All plans of a nice long relaxing evening of cold beer, his old friends, and snubbing his nose at his Agent after the offhanded remark on how fluffy his recent chapter was, flew into the wind when he saw the homicide Detective's face appear on that screen.

"Castle!" at the cheerful tone of her shadow partner, Detective Katherine Beckett sighed internally at his seemingly endless energy. Seriously a man in his late thirties shouldn't act like a five year old.

"Hey Castle, I know you just got back from your weekend but we found a body early this morning, I was wondering if you could come down to the station and take a look over what we've got so far. I could really use a fresh set of eyes on this case. It's a weird one." She requested, well aware that he would be gloating to her about his importance to the team for the next two weeks at least. But dammed it! She just couldn't make heads nor tails of this one. The vic had no records, no dental, fingerprints unidentifiable, and no particulates on the clothes, just the vic's blood. She almost wanted to scream in frustration.

"Detective you just said the magic words! I'll be there in 15." He smugly replied, as he left Alexis and Mother to unpack.

Arriving within the fifteen promised minutes with an armful of everyone's favorite Chinese, "Fear not peasants the Cavalry has arrived!" he announced to his three favorite detectives.

"He does know we have guns, right?" Javier asked Beckett not so quietly.

"Ahh! A non-believer I see! Then you must not be very hungry Detective Esposito." Castle joked as he approached two of the three detectives he worked with. "Where's Ryan?"

"Never said that Bro!" Esposito exclaimed, picking up the container with his name from the desk Castle had just set them down on. For some reason the man always got the best Chinese food, even though they always got it from the same place, whenever Castle ordered everything was perfectly prepared, just the right combination of meat, veg, and noodle. "How come this is stuff is always perfect when you get it Castle? They always forget the extra egg and onion whenever anyone else orders."

"That's because I order in Chinese," He responded absentmindedly "and what's up with the Murder Board? I thought you needed my help with figuring out the guy's story, not finding the vic too."

"Some Government official came in not two minutes after we talked to you and took everything we had out. Said that they would be taking over from here. Sorry to have called you in for nothing." Beckett apologized all the while rifling to find her own container, "I didn't know you spoke Chinese."

"I was thinking of sending Derik Storm to China to investigate a whore house ring that secretly worked as assassins, never played through." He said nonchalantly as he retrieved his own lunch from Kate's desk, observing the two detectives as they happily munched on their favorite foods. "And Ryan would be?"

"Well you see one of the grunts who cleared the board said something about this all being Malcom Reynolds' fault to one of the others. And you know how much we hate being told we can't follow through with an investigation, so we went ahead and looked up his name in the database, Ryan went down to get what we had on the guy." Beckett explained as she talked around a particularly savory piece of pork.

A cold sliver ran down his spine at the mention of his birth name, "Did you manage to save anything from the grunts?"

"Yeah, here's what the vic looks like," Javi leaned back and snatched a crime scene photo hidden in a stack of week old paperwork, "I thought I saw something weird on the guy's wrist so I copied some of the photos, this is the only one that managed to stay hidden."

Looking at the photo it didn't take long to identify him as Agent Dobson, though how the bastard had survived the shot to the head all those years ago on Whitefall, now that was something he would love to know for future reference. "Looks like someone didn't like this guy." He passed back the photo to Esposito, taking another bite of his Lo Mein, well aware that Dobson looked like he had probably gone 9 rounds in one of Niska's secret chambers. The old vampire was probably still looking for him.

"Yeah, we thought so too." Beckett affirmed continuing eating despite the rather gruesome photo in front of her.

"Hey Guys a little help here, if you don't mind?" the strained voice of one Kevin Ryan came from the elevator, his face hidden behind a stack of overflowing paper. Both Castle and Esposito rushed forward to take some of the burden from the Irishman, dumping the files on Kevin and Javi's desk, they went back to grab their food as Beckett handed Ryan his.

"I thought you only went down to get Reynolds' file, what happened?" her voice rang out as she opened a nearby folder.

Popping open his container he groaned at the perfect combination of the taste of really great Chinese food and said really great Chinese food being free. "I did, this is all one file." Continuing to chow down like a starving cow lead to pasture he continued, "There is no photo of Reynolds, but what we do have is pretty telling."

"Ryan! Most of this is redacted! What the hell am I supposed to learn on the suspect from all this crap?" Beckett's irritated voice was for once a balm to his scarred soul.

" _I Know That!"_ He stressed, "But what we _do_ have paints a pretty clear picture, to be honest I wouldn't want to meet this guy in a dark alley at night." At the startled looks from his partners and the contemplative one from Castle he reiterated. "I looked through some of his criminal doings, this guy is a hard core perp. He has no problem with killing, and has done so more than any serial killer we have ever come across before. He is like a mercenary, stealing, killing, coning, there is practically nothing he won't do for a buck." Ryan shivered at the thought of some of the things Reynolds' file had been more descriptive about.

"Shit! Look at this!" Esposito came over to the other two detectives holding part of Malcom Reynolds' multi-folder file, his food long forgotten. "This guy's former military, says hear he was a resistance fighter in some civil war, the most notable account of the war talks about a valley. Apparently he was a Sargent, but by the time the battle was over he was the highest in the chain of command with around 2,000 men under him, and a brevet to Captain. Fuck, Beckett do you know how many losses you have to suffer to have a Sargent as the highest in the chain of command? A shitload! Hell I wouldn't want to meet this guy down the block let alone a dark alley at night, with the mental scares from something like this I'm not surprised he's so violent." Esposito's voice carried over to the man he was unwittingly talking about.

Castle ducked his head into his own file, hiding the smirk that crossed his face at the respect in Esposito's voice for his past actions in the Unification War. Oh if only he knew that the goofy writer he loved to poke fun at was the war torn savage he was in awe of. Of course if he had the choice he would never have gone to Serenity Valley in the first place, even if that meant losing the respect of his fellow veteran. Serenity was not something to make light of, even now it left a bad taste in his mouth, that week without supplies from either side was an entirely new layer of hell, seeing his men die from easily preventable causes had engorged the scar left on his soul more than the battle itself. Of the 2,000 that had grudgingly surrendered only 148 left that Gorram valley alive, the fact still haunted him to this day well into his life as Richard Castle.

"Ok, stop your gushing Esposito. War hero or not, this guy is still a hardened criminal. Since most of this is redacted and we have no way if identifying this guy or going on with the case I suggest we keep our ears open for this Malcom Reynolds. Be quiet like about it though, as much as I would like to bring this bastard in, I don't want to send anyone home in body bags. Let's get back to the cold cases, and paperwork, unless you have a gem of insight over there Castle?" Her voice startled a laugh out of him, only making them more suspicious at his longstanding silence.

"What's so funny Castle?" Beckett's brow raised even higher as she turned to face him.

"This guy got double crossed and landed in the middle of a desert buck naked is all." He internally cringed at revealing that particularly embarrassing tidbit, but comforted himself in knowing that they would never know it was him that happened to. Making a note to himself to find out how in the 13 layers of hell his file ended up at the precinct, he continued to observe the others around him, casually reaching for his second container of food.

The three NYPD homicide detectives looked startled at his words, might as well use this opportunity to throw them further off his sent he supplied, "If I were you I would look for pilots with sever PTSD, it says that this guy is wanted for flying an unregistered aircraft through restricted airspace." Well he wasn't lying to them there, not really. He never had actually registered Serenity under him after he bought her from Captain Harbatkin, and the Alliance did want him for flying through more than one restricted airspaces. He just would have to make sure that they never knew about his pilot license.

"Thanks Castle. You can go home if you want, we don't really have anything urgent at the moment and I know that you are tired from the trip." Beckett's voice had started our hesitant but quickly grew back to its normal think l authoritative tone.

"Great! I think I'll take you up on that offer, traffic was hell on the way back and Mother never did stop talking about her new character. And Alexis was too wrapped up in the next semester and her new beau to save my poor ears." At the slightly guilty look that flittered across Ryan's face Mal knew his earlier suspicions were correct. Honestly those two were horrible at keeping secrets and it was a little disappointing that they didn't trust him to come clean about their relationship. He understood that you didn't choose who you fall for, he was a lot older than both of them when you added up his real age. As far as he was concerned they were kids compared to him, and the real are gap between him and Kate was far larger than theirs. Though that wouldn't stop him from frightening Ryan a little.

As he headed towards the elevator with what was left of his Chinese he shot over his shoulder, "Oh and Ryan I expect Alexis home before 10:30 tonight! You're picking her up at 7:00 Right?" letting a little of his Captain's voice peek through, he watched their reactions out of the corner of his eye.

Beckett was flabbergasted, simply put. 'Alexis and Ryan? Together? Castle was calm with it? Dear god what was the world coming to if Rick Castle wasn't freeking out that his daughter was dating a man 12 years her senior?'

Javi worked his jaw, clenching both it and his fists in unbridled furry. Alexis was like a little sister to him, he thought Keven saw her the same way too but obviously he was wrong. Torn between happiness that his partner was moving on from the whole Jenny debacle and rage at him for moving on with Alexis, he stood silent as he watched Castle for his cue. If he was really ok with all this then Javi wouldn't break Kevin Ryan's face, but if Castle wanted him to he would happily take his partner to the sparring ring after work.

The rest of the precinct on their way back to work from lunch looked up as soon as Castle uttered those words, looks of shock were prevalent in the room. Many wondering if Ryan had lost Irish loving mind, after all he had the balls to date the daughter of one of his partners without so much as a by your leave. And Castle was acting oh so mature about the whole thing, something was up.

Detective Keven Ryan was for his part freeking out, a million things ran through his mind, the most prevalent being 'He knows, he knows, Dear God I'm about to die aren't I? What if he poisoned me? He did get lunch today.' Thoughts of his untimely death running rampant through his head he could only respond to his girlfriend's father with a rather weak, "Y-Yes Sir."

"Good! I think tonight is the perfect time to do some much needed maintenance to my sword collection, don't you?" he eye smiled at the much younger man, happy to be able to intimidate someone with his many weapons for the first time in oh so long.

"Yes Sir."

"Well I better get started if I want to get through the guns first."

"Sounds good." He almost squeaked, he knew exactly how good of a shot Castle was.

"Before you ask, if I were to kill you it would be very painful and involve a lot of blood loss. So feel free to finish your lunch, I'm not the type to use poison." Mal knew he was laying it on a little thick, but he just couldn't help himself.

"T- Thanks Castle." Ryan almost sighed in relief.

"Don't mention it! Oh and if I suddenly have to start taking Alexis to the dr.'s for birth control I'll know who to blame don't I?" and with that he entered the now empty elevator, the previous occupants suddenly deciding to do other things.

Kevin gulped as he suddenly realized that he didn't want to meet Richard Castle down a dark alley at night either. In fact between Malcom Reynolds and Rick Castle he'd take Malcom Reynolds any day.


End file.
